


the shrike to your sharp and glorious thorn

by concertconfetti



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alive Renfri | Shrike (The Witcher), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Fae & Fairies, Faerie Triss, Fire, It's not super graphic but there is a lot of blood, Mentioned Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Other, Stregobor Dies Like He Fucking Should Have, The relationship here is SUPER LOOSE, Transformation, no beta we die like stregobor fucking should have
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-18 04:07:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29112060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/concertconfetti/pseuds/concertconfetti
Summary: It's fire that takes Renfri, in the end - not the sharp knives of Stregobor's study nor the tragic puncture from her fight with Geralt. Something's been calling her towards a fire in the woods, toward a Destiny she didn't know she'd created. Renfri is changing and all the while she remembers - silver is for monsters.
Relationships: Triss Merigold/Renfri | Shrike
Comments: 18
Kudos: 16
Collections: The Witcher Quick Fic #05





	the shrike to your sharp and glorious thorn

**Author's Note:**

> Okay! This is pretty violent so I'm going to add some content warnings - non-graphic descriptions of Shrike-like behavior; blood; dubious consent to a fae deal; veiled references to past child abuse.

It's fire that takes Renfri, in the end, after the villagers run Geralt out of town and Stregobor makes the foolish mistake of bringing her corpse to his tower. Her eyes stare ever upward and, for a while, see nothing of her one-night love, the judgemental sky, or the cold stone of Stregobor's ruined tower. And then, all at once, she could see fire. 

Refri gasps back to life on a table, Stregobor's knife poised above her breast. The gasp turns into a roar and the Shrike spears her prey on his own scalpel, driving it as far through his skull as she can manage before shoving his worthless body to the floor. She left him sputtering and strides naked through the castle, following the flames dancing in her vision. 

She stops only once, taking stock of each perverse illusion as they wink out of existence, and notices a spear in a disused corner of Stregobor's former paradise. She knows just the head to shove it through. 

There's still enough life in Stregobor's eye that she can enjoy killing him a second time. She seizes him by the ankle and drags him through the tower, ignoring his half-coherent pleas.

"You're just proving me right," he accuses, or doesn't, Renfri isn't sure. 

"There is no evil worse than the ones you've committed," Renfri snarls, "against me. Against all the others." She tosses the wizard out of his front door, on the dew-soaked grass under a full, harvest moon, and everywhere she sees flames urging her forward. It's easy, easy as it ever was, to brandish the spear and shove.

Renfri is left, then, naked in the moonlight, blood on her hands and arms and legs and face and a dark fury in her heart, and for a moment she's distracted from the guiding flames (coalescing, combining, and shrinking to a single point deep in the wood). She snatches a torch from the tower's crumbling sconces with half a mind to run down the streets of Blaviken setting every building alight.

But the fire in the woods calls to her, has _always_ called to her; the torch falls from her hand as she breaks into a run toward that single point of light. Her feet are swift and sure as if she's run this path many times over, though she can feel her feet bleed on the unforgiving ground. And always ahead of her is the fire - she's seen it before, when she's woken up, half-naked atop this lover or that, when her crew shook her awake from nightmares. Her gaze somehow always fell on the woods and the flames crackling in them, flames only she could see. 

Renfri wonders what she's become, in all this time, and wonders if Geralt would deem her fit for silver now. Her breath wheezes through the hole in her throat, a constant reminder; she should be dead. Branches snap against her skin, yet Renfri does not bleed. 

_Silver is for monsters_. Geralt's voice echos in her head and a snarl, a laugh rips its way out of Renfri's chest. Her feet carry her through glade and creek and thicket, and still, she runs faster toward her uncertain Destiny. Mud splatters up around her calves and mixes with the drying blood, painting her a wild thing. A butcherbird, flying through the woods, her home eternal, called forth and forward by violence and flame. 

Running takes days, years, and at the same time, it feels like seconds before she crashes into a thicket rounded with thorns. Her skin is torn up and a coil of thorns sticks gruesomely out of her torso. She is soaked in mud and blood, pale-death skin covered in the detritus of the forest, and the fire bakes her into this shape, a nymph, an undead specter of the last wild places on the Continent. 

"Renfri," a voice calls, and a great, angular woman steps into her view. Her skin is baked terracotta, brown and lovely in the firelight, and her hair falls in wild ringlets around her face. She grins, her teeth sharp and bloody; Renfri glances down at the rabbit hanging limp in the woman's hand. "You came," she says, the relief in her musical voice clashing violently with the image of her tattered dress, blood on her chin, "you finally came." 

"You've been calling me," Renfri says, her voice hollow and lifeless, a wisp of a thing thanks to her death-injuries. "You called me back from death." 

The creature before her grins all the wider as she steps forward, meal forgotten, and wraps Renfri in an embrace. When the thorns prick her, she does not bleed. 

"No man can kill you for long, Renfri," the woman says, as though that explains everything. "Not when you're mine." 

"Who are you?" 

The creature pulls away and cups Renfri's cheek, looking her over with reverence. "I am Triss," she whispers, and her touch feels like fire, "last of the firebirds - a protector of the wild places in this world. Of the wild things. And you, my dear Shrike, are bound to me as these woods are tied to the earth. You approached a fire on Samhain and pricked your finger saying -"

" - I am one with the flames, wild and free. I will devour my enemies," Renfri whispers back, the words pulled out of her soul. Triss smiles at her, soft and loving. "That was years ago," she breathes. A soothsayer told her those words, 'say them for protection, and pray she doesn't choose you'. 

"And I've been calling you since," Triss replies, her hand curling possessively around Renfri's shoulder. "You had your mission, I understand, and you were felled by a witcher. No matter - the fool used steel. Bringing you back was as simple as stoking the flames." 

Renfri swallows, considering. _Silver is for monsters._ Triss traces the path of the thorns down Renfri's tattered form, reverence in every movement; a faerie creature with immense power. The reason Renfri is alive, tenuous though that may be, and Stregobor's corpse is staked in front of his precious town. 

"I can keep you, Renfri, if you so choose," Triss says softly. "Your prayer has fueled my life once again and I can keep you - we can rebuild my court, and no man will ever harm you again." Her fire lights on Renfri's wounds, physical and mental, and the warmth almost heals them. Almost. "I can give you purpose." 

"I have a purpose," Renfri says, though as the words leave her lips they feel meaningless. What purpose does she have? Geralt was right about revenge, now that it was done, it left her empty. 

"Of course," Triss says with a small gesture to the fire. "You are fuel for the fire. But I can keep you, Renfri. No girl need suffer as you did ever again." 

It's fire that claims Renfri in the end - it started burning when she was a child, hated for something she couldn't control, hunted for reasons she didn't understand. The words Triss spins around her make it harder and harder to remember the brief, bright moments of light - she tries desperately to hold on to the festivals, her crew, a white-haired witcher whispering to his horse, but the harder she tries the quicker they slip through her fingers until all that's left is her body and the smoldering embers of her soul. She has a purpose - she is fuel for the fire. Her eyes find Triss' and she finds herself nodding. Triss grins. 

She kisses Renfri, and it's all teeth and blood and inferno like she's swallowing up everything Renfri is and reforming her. Renfri melts into the firebird's embrace and relishes in the pain of her skin knitting back together, of the forest and thorns becoming part of her. When the kiss breaks, Renfri laughs wild and breathless into the night as Chaos burns through her veins. 

"My little butcherbird," Triss says fondly. She pulls a crown of thistle and bark from the flames of her signal fire, shaking it free of stray sparks before placing it on Renfri's head. "My princess. Welcome home."

* * *

Morning breaks over Blaviken - red and pink and orange, like the last gasp of fire in the night. The fishermen are hesitant to leave the shore for fear of the raging sea. Marilka is the unfortunate soul who finds Stregobor, who runs back down the blood-soaked path screaming for her father. And all the while the butcherbird watches from her perch in the woods.

**Author's Note:**

> fic title from Shrike by Hosier


End file.
